My kids were in the backseat as we pulled into the parking lot facing the beautiful view of the mountains and trees switching to gold.
“Wow, this is so pretty mommy” my son whispered. My daughter agreed with her developing toddler gibberish. But I sat quietly. My eyes fixated on the trail that I walked almost 7 years ago with the man I loved unknowingly towards our engagement. As the memory flooded my brain, I tried to find holes in what was.
“He didn’t love me then.”
”It was all a lie and I should have said no”
Whines from the backseat pulled me back to the present. To the aftermath of it all. To the ashes of the house we built.
Being back in a place filled with memories and milestones has been hard. Not because a trail can trigger my grief, but because my grief can trigger a desire to rewrite history. In so many ways, I’ve convinced myself that the only way to heal is to rewrite the past. Or that rebuilding can only happen when I damn the ashes as I lay the bricks.
As I watched my kids run along the trail that once meant so much to me, I realized that healing wasn’t on the other side of the eraser I was putting on the words of my past. I wouldn’t be restored by rewriting the past.
I remember that particular day this month. My family, friends, and I gathered in an old historic house nestled within trees that had begun to change. Vibrant yellow, red, and orange-hued leaves made me feel like nature itself was celebrating our love. As my makeup artist powdered my face I glanced out the window and caught a glimpse of the boy I had fallen in love with. He laughed with his friends in the suit I knew he’d looked so handsome in. I remember losing my breath at our first look, wiping the tears from his eyes, and holding back my own. I remember the feeling of starting forever.
So it’s tempting, as I sit in the ruins of what was and what I had always dreamed of, to go back and change the story. It’s tempting to look to the past and hold my former self hostage to what my current self knows. My own way of punishing myself for not knowing sooner, for not withholding my yes, for not preparing for the thunder as I watched the rain.
Our desperation to make sense of our hurt and to make peace with our past can sometimes cause us to relentlessly delete the memories of the life we are no longer living. And while it may feel empowering to forget, it’s actually crippling. When we put an eraser to our story we diminish the healing power of seeing God at work in our past. When we lock the doors that hold the seasons that held a great deal of pain, we miss the healing that comes from letting God walk us through the rooms He held us in the entire time.
I’m writing to you, not on the other side of this revelation. I’m writing to you in the middle of a month that is now just October. I’m writing to you to pull my own strength. And to encourage you in the fact that there is grace to look back without feeling ashamed about the yeses you gave and the things you prayed for that didn’t work out (the way I’d define working out to be). You don’t have to rewrite what was in order to garner hope for what could be. Hope isn’t gathered by how you remember things but by Who you remember when you think of such things.
I pray when you catch a glimpse of the past you don’t attempt to find the holes you may have missed. Instead, I pray with every glance out your rearview you would have the courage to find His Holy hand resting on you the whole time.
Much Love,
C
I am in tears. I needed to hear this today. Thank you for your beautiful and true words. <3
I was just trying to re-write today at lunch. You’re so right - God was always there. Thank you for encouraging me to embrace the past me to recognize freedom for my current self.